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December 22, 2014

Hidey-Ho lovely people. I'm going to pretend there are actually people here reading, even thought I know at this point I've lost everyone to some other intellectually stimulating thing, since this is mostly abandoned. Ten years I've had this blog, ten years last September. A lot is different. Even more is not.

It is Christmas Break again, I have finished my last semester of graduate school, and starting in January I will student teach at a middle school nearby. There is a lot of negative that has happened during this exercise in More Education, but I'm trying to let it go and just get what I need out of it. I am not worried about the student teaching, I'm simply wanting to get it over with, so I can get on with the business of actually teaching and being paid for it. I've said goodbye to all my friends at the elementary school which I adore working, at least until I return in April, a shiny new for-real teacher. Except there isn't anything shiny and new about me, just a muffin top and gray hairs that stubbornly refuse to take any color.

June 10, 2014

Almost a year. I think that's enough of a break. I haven't had much to say. Well, actually I don't even know if I had much to say in the last year, because I haven't really had time to think about having much to say. I've been too busy just trying to hold my head above the water, just trying to suck in enough air to keep from drowning.

But it is indeed summer again, funny enough it always comes around, and I get a little bit of a break. Maybe it is just shallower water, where my feet can touch the sandy ground, and I can stand up and breath slowly without fear of salt water leaking into the corners of my mouth.

I finally felt like writing again, just recently. I'm not taking any classes this summer, so I'm not wasting my creative writing time on journal reflections and papers that nobody cares about but that must be checked off a list of required submissions. I do need to study for the Praxis exam, which I will hopefully take later in the summer. It seems like so far into the future, August, but really it's practically tomorrow. No, I'm not ready.

Instead I'm taking naps in the afternoons and watching old movies on HBO and cleaning out a drawer or a cabinet here or there, and getting the boys packed for Boy Scout camp. They are both going this year for ten days of glorious Lord of the Flies living in the mid-Missouri Ozarks. Meanwhile my husband and I are going to the beach for a few days, our first getaway without children in nine years. I haven't started packing for that, either. No, I'm not ready.

I saw a woman at the grocery store the other day trying to put bags into her car and strap a bucking, screaming toddler into a five point harness, her hair in her face and sweat on her brow. I thought, wow, that was so long ago for me. I feel for that woman. But I do not wish to be her again, I'm perfectly content with my insolent and bitter teenager.

I no longer have elementary aged children living in my house. Instead I have two young men in only slightly different stages of puberty. They are like young goats on a rock, constantly climbing up and knocking the other off. I'm quite certain the only fresher hell than two boys in puberty would be girls in the same stage, but that is not my hell, it is someone else's and I'll take the hand I've been dealt, thank you very much.

I'll take my two beautiful sons, both boy scouts, both soccer players, both musicians. One is in his last summer before entering high school, one heading into middle school. New buildings, new bus routes, new teachers, books and friends. New pencils. I can smell the wood and graphite from here. Same old anxieties. No, I'm not ready.

Sometimes I get the feeling that what is coming in this next year as I try to finish school and be Supermom again will be even harder to manage than the insanity of this past year. I am not Supermom, we've established that before. I look back over this past year and wonder, how in the hell did I do THAT? How can I ever handle more than this? Dare I tempt fate and think these thoughts? Probably not. Yeats' poem plays over and over in my brain. It is the screensaver on my phone, lest I forget the fragility of my hold on all of the things for which I allow myself to be responsible.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;

It is summer, and I am standing weakly in shifting sand instead of treading water for a few short weeks, then we start it all again. No, I'm not ready.

July 08, 2013

(Scene: riding along in the car, The Grateful Dead's Touch of Grey comes on the radio.)

Me: Now, this is a band you need to get to know at some point. Something to keep in mind for someday. This was their only real radio hit, and not the best song, but its a good start.

Him: Um, if this is their only radio hit why are they so awesome?

Me: Because the radio isn't an indicator of good music. Its simply an indicator of what other people think is good music.

Him: ...

Me: Anyway, they were a great band, and they had thousands of concerts for twenty some-odd years and some people spent their lives following them around going to all their concerts. They recorded live shows and sold tapes and it was a really grassroots thing, how their music became part of popular culture. And people just loved them, and their music, and they danced...and they did a lot of drugs.

Him: ...wait, what?

Me: Like, A LOT of drugs. Some of those people can't eat soup off a spoon now, they did so many drugs and it killed too many brain cells, but hey, the music was good.

Him: Nice.

Me: So if anyone ever tries to get you to do drugs, just remember, you want to be able to eat soup off a spoon when you get old.

Him: Mom, I'm not going to do drugs. But that won't be the reason why.

Me: I don't care why, as long as you don't. That's as good a reason as any. Besides, when you're in that situation, and you will be, and someone is trying to get you to do something you don't want to do, sometimes it helps to have a funny reason to stand your ground. It diffuses the stress of the situation for you.

April 17, 2013

Ho-hey, hi there. Not much to see here, sorry. I just keep swimming, swimming, swimming, like a little blue Dori fish, flapping my little fins trying to keep going. It's been an extended winter, and its APRIL, people, and they are still threatening that snow may fall here on the plain. This is not amusing anymore.

So yeah, in February I went back to school. It's a weird feeling, to be back on a college campus trying to figure out in which building is your class located, or how to get get a copy key in the library and make copies of a presentation that's due in 15 minutes. The good news, I suppose, is that this campus is well-known for its graduate programs, and so there are very few preppy little coeds with perky boobs bouncing around, at least when I'm there in the evenings, it is mostly old people like me trying to revive the muscle memory of how to study and learn and write papers, while maintaining a full time job and four soccer practices, two music lessons and 2-4 soccer games in any given week, plus feed the dirty little soccer hobbits occasionally, and perhaps even do some laundry. Not that I'm bitter. About the boobs, I mean.

I may have told my oldest last week to fish his soccer uniform out of the bottom of the hamper and put back it on for a game. I suppose I could have told him to spray it with Febreze or something, but he didn't seem to care.

But! A light at the end of the tunnel. Yesterday I turned in a giant final project from class number one, and am halfway through class number two. It's nice not to have all that hanging over my head, that is a feeling I remember well. I'll be done with this semester in two more weeks, and then summer classes start May 20th.

In the meantime, the vertigo has come back a couple of times, enough that my doctor referred me to a neurologist, who sent me for an MRI and another nasty test called an ENG. If you have never heard of an ENG, it is a test where they shoot water into your ears to see if they can activate the vertigo so they can get brain readings off of it. Turns out, it's not IF they can activate the vertigo by shooting water into your ears, its HOW MUCH and HOW BAD. The answer? Very, very much, and worse than I ever imagined. Even though I knew it was coming, which I thought would be a better scenario than when it hits me out of the blue, it was bad. They did it four times, twice in each ear. I haven't felt so vulnerable and overwhelmed and in pain since the last time I had a baby.

At this point, they think the vertigo is actually a form of a migraine, just with the floor falling away from me instead of pain in my head. I'm unsure which is worse. I haven't had migraine headaches in years, other than the one I had this past September which the doctor now says was definitely a migraine, but the vertigo, this is a problem. So that's been fun. What isn't fun is realizing that its only April and I've already used up my medical flexible spending account.

It is possible that I've got a little too much going on. After all, those are the times when my body tends to fail me in fantastically epic ways. I'm channeling my best Sweet Brown. (I know it's old, but it's still funny. And true.)

So here we are, enjoying a nice rainy night of cancelled soccer practice, eating dinner in our pajamas, avoiding the news, and going to bed early. Take it when you can get it, I say. For tomorrow, life goes on.

*Advice from Tina Fey - "By the way, when Oprah Winfrey is suggesting you may have overextended yourself, you need to examine your fucking life."

February 27, 2013

I have a thing for 80's romantic comedies - all of the fun banter, less sex and nudity - much more innocent than today. (Not that I'm a prude, but COME ON, Hollywood, tell a story without using sex as a crutch, maybe, huh?) Finnegan Begin Again is one I recall fondly, but admittedly it is the rhyming title for which it is memorable. My absolute favorite movie ever is Max Dugan Returns, starring Jason Robards, Donald Sutherland, and Matthew Broderick, three different generations of my favorite actors in one adorable silly romcom. It also starred Marsha Mason a single mom - a teacher no less - wrangling these three men. It was the first time I noticed a strong female protagonist, a well-developed character - imperfect, but trying hard to walk a moral line, making do with what she had. I began to seek characters like that - women who would serve as my guide into who I wanted to be - in books and in movies, and these have become my favorite characters. From Places in the Heart and Murphy's Romance all the way to Where The Heart Is - women who are on their own struggling to make a life for their family. These are the women I admire. (Yes, Sally Field features prominently in the list. Love her.)

Notice Gone With the Wind doesn't make my list. I hate the character of Scarlett O'Hara with a red velvet passion. Stop whining about your stupid party, you spoiled brat. My favorite characters aren't perfect, but they have to be likeable. You have to want to root for them. I kind of just wanted her to be kicked.

Anyway, I eventually found more of these strong women characters in Shakespeare's comedies - thanks to a high school production of Midsummer Night's Dream, which helped me focus in college and led me to my degree in English. Beatrice, Viola, Rosalind are smart and strong but flawed women who fight for what they want, written by a man no less. Brilliant.

Which brings me back to where I am now, beginning again, back at school myself. It is fun, it isn't as hard as I thought it might be workload wise, I now realize I probably could have taken more than one class at a time but I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew and have to drop one. I'll be smarter in future semesters. But I'm learning a lot - mostly about the difference between what I already know and what I don't, and what kind of classes I would like to teach. I know I want to be a specialist, and I probably want to stay in technology, or maybe STEM. Despite my lack of decent math and science skills personally, STEM is really about innovation in cross-platform education, and that fascinates me.

(If you're interested in innovative education topics, Edutopia is a good place to start.)

I'm having a good time getting focused on what I want to be when I grow up. I guess it's about time, now that I'm approaching my 41st birthday. I am strong, I am flawed, but I'm doing the best that I can. I'm trying to be that woman.

Of course, I've also always liked The Yellow Wallpaper, too. Maybe being strong is just about fighting off the descent into madness? Some days are better than others. It would help if it would STOP SNOWING, but maybe that's just me.

January 18, 2013

So, we have the flu at my house. Type B, the strain most of the midwest is seeing, different from Type A which is occuring mostly on the coasts, according to our pediatrician. My husband took off Tuesday and Wednesday and I put in for a substitute teacher for Thursday and Friday. Ah, co-parenting at its finest. I'm pretty lucky on that front, I know.

The 12 year old, whom I shall call Mr. Snarkyfus from here on, has been with fever since Monday evening, and yesterday morning the 10 year old went down. They are two totally different patients. Mr. Snarkyfus, for example, sleeps away his fever for days on end. The house is quiet and peaceful and quite lovely, actually, as I get caught up on things like laundry and bleaching everything he touches. I know he is feeling better when the talk-back returns. (No sullen silent treatment here, unfortunately.)

The 4th grader, however, is a whining machine when sick. I'm so tiiiiiired, so huuuuungry, I will not eat thaaaaat, why can't I have some iiiiiiiice creeeeeeam? He's a continuous cycle of up, down, bed, couch, cannot get comfortable, snuggly, DON'T TOUCH ME mess. It's exhausting.

Thank Goodness for the case of wine my parents gifted me at Christmas, so I don't have to run to the store every hour.

So. We're hanging in there. We're watching a lot of Shaun The Sheep, usually about the time I get sick of the thrasher metal music playing in the background of the computer games the boys love at Kongregate.net, and force everyone onto a different screen. This, I can watch all day.

I'm kind of enjoying the free time, although I shudder to think what shape my classroom will be in come Tuesday morning when we return.

January 02, 2013

So yeah, here we are. I know I know, it took me long enough, but in the end I just didn't want that last post to be the end of the line here, so I paid up and for the time being, will continue to post, however sporadically it comes to mind.

We had a great Christmas vacation, we surprised the kids with a trip to Disney World in Florida. Turns out all that traveling for work my husband does has its benefits, namely free airplane tickets and free hotel for a week. Which is good, because the cost of themepark tickets in Orlando will take your breathe away. Regardless, we had a wonderful time. My kids are both adrenaline junkies, so of course we rode every roller coast imaginable, even waiting in the specific line to be in the front row. I went with them, as I too love roller coasters. Weird, I know, seeing that I am such a control freak that I would love roller coasters, but I do. My body doesn't love them as much, my neck and back seized up on me several times. The spirit is willing but the body is weak, and by the 4th day I was willing to accept the leering smirks of the teenage park employees as I waited in line with my boys and then gently stepped off to the side as they boarded and strapped into their doom. I kid, I never worried about them for a second.

What did concern me? Handrails. The handrails of the labrynthian waiting stockyards for roller coaster rides. STOP TOUCHING THAT OH MY GOD I just watched that girl sneeze all over it. Here, drink some Purell.

Anyway, now that the holidays are over my mood seems to be lifting, and I don't know if its just the natural progression of a depression freeing me or if the holidays are in fact to blame for my lack of joy. I'll admit Christmas is stressful, what with the extended family visits and the expectations of gift giving (as in, making sure I spend the right amount on this person who may spend much more or much less on me...) and the plethora of comforting winter foods filled with starches and sugar and carbs that I try to avoid, and so forth. I would very much like for Christmas to just be about the birth of a very special baby than about the frenzy of merchandising and whether or not you splurge to pay someone to put lights around the roofline of your home. But I can't seem to convince anyone else of this.

I liked not being home on Christmas, God help me, I really did. I would have liked it even better if we could have skipped the tree and the decorations and the gift giving part completely. I understand now those people who go on cruises or to the Carribean over Christmas vacation - stress free.

But at least now its over, and the decorations are back in storage, the laundry is almost done, tomorrow we go back to school. And in a few weeks, I go back to school, literally. I'm going to get my teacher certification, and probably work toward a masters. I've always wanted to do it, I've always said "when I retire, I want to retire from teaching." I've said it before, I should have done it years ago. But I don't regret the career experience with which I ended up, it's made me richer in spirit overall. But if I plan to stay in education, it might help if I have the degree to back it up.

It won't take me long, two years, maybe a little more. We'll see how hard it is to juggle two active boys (scouts, soccer, baseball, music lessons,) a husband who travels a lot and a night class or two. When its all said and done, I'll be certified to teach middle school social studies, which admittedly is only interesting to me because it is the shortest distance to certification, given my bachelor's degree minor in history. From there, who knows where I'll end up. Maybe someday I really will be teaching Shakespeare in Pop Culture at the college level (my stated goal 20 years ago.)

But for now, I'm just plugging away at my life, one day at a time. Listening to music that makes me happy, trying to read more, eating well, and keeping the banshees at bay. I'm watching out for myself - my own soul. It's all good. And I promise I'll try to get back to posting stupid and irreverent junk more often. Welcome to 2013 my friends.

December 20, 2012

I've got a whole slew of half-written posts started in the Notes app on my iPhone. Sometimes its a song title or lyric, sometimes a phrase, sometimes a whole paragraph. I think of things I want to say and pound it out in Notes, and once it has left my brain it leaves completely, closing the door tightly and leaving the key under the mat. By the time I look again, usually to start another thought- it has become irrelevant, life has moved too fast, as it does. So I never write them here.

This last week has been tough, for obvious reasons. I haven't wanted to weigh in here, and I've stayed away from the fray on the news and Facebook and Twitter as much as possible. I even deleted the Facebook app from my phone for several days, to take away the temptation. Several times this last week I've caught myself darting my eyes around my classroom and planning what would I do if someone stormed my building and how I would protect my kids. I have a vivid imagination, and I'm a worst case scenario emotional planner, not a great combination when tragedy strikes. I tend to get stuck in these things, and depression finds me easier there if I don't protect myself.

But its safe to say depression has found me, sneaking up on me as it is wont to do in winter, despite some walls I built as a safety precaution. Those walls were made of straw anyway, and I knew that, but I didn't count on things like the Newton tragedy and a couple of other devastatingly bad news things to come along all at the same time, blowing out pieces of hay like so much grass from the back of a lawnmower.

A month ago I was feeling great and alert and happy, this past Sunday I could barely get out of bed. I know now that great, super exhalted happy month-ago me? Pre-depression mania. I didn't even recognize it. A friend even sent me a message on Facebook and suggested I sounded depressed, which to me was the craziest thing I ever heard. But it went downhill from there, slowly at first, and then this past Saturday it sped up, like being in an elevator with the line cut and you can't get out. It takes your breath away, when it goes that fast.

Crazy is as crazy does, Ma'am. And no, its not the weight of the suggestion that carries you down.

So here we are. Snowed in, to boot. Which is probably what I needed, frankly, to sit on the couch with a cup of tea and my dog and a book. Salinger's Franny and Zoey, a book I'm rereading after many years, and yes I know, it is probably not the best choice right now. It may even have conributed to the swing in mood. But it could be worse- It could be Joan Didion. And I've ordered Tiny Beautiful Things as my Christmas present to myself.

Tiny, Beautiful Things is one of the notes I'd written into my phone, by the way, several weeks ago. As tired and hammered as I feel in the state I am in now, I cling to it, this collection of advice columns written by Cheryl Strayed, especially the one where someone wrote to her asking simply, "WTF?"

Because I feel like that, too. "What The Fuck" sums up nicely these devastating events that keep flinging past me and other people in my life, like a tennis ball machine with faulty wiring. The answer she wrote as Sugar to that particular question of "WTF?" is so perfect, so devastating in it's divulgence of her own personal hell that you begin to realize your own life is not so bad, and so the summary sticks with you.

"Ask better questions, Sweetpea. The Fuck is your life. Answer it."

I don't have better questions. But her answer soothes, just the same.

I got an email from Typepad this week, that my credit card on file has expired and they couldn't run the charge of the annual fee for this blog. i have a few days to either update my info, or let it lapse and say goodby to the whole thing. I'm...considering. Inaction is itself a decision, you know. I also know, however, that depressive episodes are not a good time to make (or not make) major decisions. So I will probably pay up anyway.

But before that happens I thought I'd write maybe one more time and see how it feels. So here it is, another note that I'd written to myself, almost a year ago. It kind of fits, again, in light of Newton, although it didn't for a long time.

I don't often admit that I'm weak. It's not part of my character, and its definitely not part of my outward personality. I try to be a free range parent, and a free range spouse. And then I read posts by Jenny the Bloggess about Lifeflight helicopters and I realize, I am not that strong. I am a faker. (I can't find the link to this post now, sorry.)

Oh sure, I'm pretty good in an emergency. I can focus as a caregiver and go into triage mode. It is afterwards I'm a mess. I try and stay away from drama, but it tends to find me. Still, I fakemy way through as much as possible. "never let them see you sweat" is my outward mantra, emotionally. This blog is different, in written words I can let it go in ways I will never be able to do in person, out loud.

And everytime my husband gets on a plane, which is ridiculously often, I know he's fine. Nothing to see here. But there's a voice in the back of my head that says, Girl, you arenot this lucky. You don't deserve him, or those kids, or that dog, or that house, that life. Your time is coming. My self-esteem is a bitch with a red, pointy tail, and I've been holding her at bay since I learned how to manage her, so many years ago. My life is pretty good, but every once in a while I hear her snickering, and I start counting heads.

I was grateful last Friday to be able to see my youngest son in his classroom across the hallway from mine, to get a text from my oldest that he was home from school and could he play the Xbox, to get a text from husband to pick up something for him from the grocery store. Grateful to count heads. And now I'm grateful for winter break, Christmas celebrations, a little holiday travel and vacation, time to get away and breathe (as much as one can indeed breathe, during holiday travel and extended family vacations.)

I'm reminded this week of Kate Braestrup's book, Here If You Need Me. A book I read several years ago and dig out during these times, along with anything by Anne Lamott. It is a memoir of loss, opening your heart to let in new love, and following a road of Christian belief. It is a salve to me, despite its melancholia. I thought of it many times in the past week, before I cut myself off from the finger-pointing and politicking of Facebook. Specifically, this line:

"Nowhere in scripture does it say, 'God is a car accident" or 'God is death.' God is justice, kindness, mercy, and always - always - love. So if you want to know where God is in this or in anything, look for the love."

This is true of Newton. It is true for my friends facing their own personal devastation. It is true for me, a mostly innocent bystander with a vivid imagination and an Id with a mean streak. It is true for you, whether you believe it or not.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm here if you need me. But if you don't, I'll be tending to my own. And I'll probably see you soon. I wonder if Typepad takes Paypal? I should look into that.

November 16, 2012

After a break last year when we visited family in Alabama for Thanksgiving and I didn't have to show up with anything but a bottle of wine, it is my turn to cook the turkey again. I was totally going to do The Pioneer Woman's brined turkey recipe again this year, which is fantastic and worth the work. But then I overheard a conversation in the teacher's lounge about Trader Joe's brined fresh turkeys and how awesome they are and how they sell out a full week before Thanksgiving, and I thought, hmm, my husband's office is just across the intersection from our nearest Trader Joe's. So I texted him and told him to haul his butt over there and get me a special, preshus turkey before they run out. Which he dutifully did.

Good boy.

It takes up a big part of my fridge for the next week, but that's okay. Today is Friday, there's only two days of school next week, and I now I can use my free time painting the laundry room and drinking wine instead of basting.

October 26, 2012

I don't know about the rest of you, but I can't wait for November 6th to come and go so we can get on with our lives. Four years ago I was really into the election process, I was so ready to be finished with the policies surrounding the Village Idiot that was Bush, the next four years were so full of promise and I was flush with the excitement of change.

This time around, my beliefs haven't changed, my views of politics haven't changed, but I am a bit duller in my support. I'm a little more tired - tired of defending that which didn't work as well as we'd hoped, tired of watching the Republican Party play Whack-a-mole with the pop-up attention seekers who are sealing their own fate, I'm just tired of all the pandering. I'm less than satisfied with where we've arrived four years later, and yet, there's no freaking way I'm going to vote any differently than I did then, given that I have a vagina which belongs to me, and only me. And if you believe that civil rights of women, gays, or immigrants isn't our biggest problem, bully for you, but I believe these things are more important than money. Yes, Capitalism is king in a Democracy, I get that. But if you live a life looking only for the money you think you deserve, then you are not living your life. To be concerned only with money or the choices and rights of other people to which you do not agree is to be missing the point, utterly and completely, of a Christian life. Or any other life focused on an organized religion. It's not about the book, it's about the people.

And so I early vote, and wait for the morning of November 7th, and hope we don't have some drawn out, hanging chad-style national nightmare. I want to get on with it. I want the signs to come down, I want the passionate pleas for attention to go away so we can return to focusing on what matters: raising our own children, working our jobs, caring for those in need.

Don't talk to me about economy and jobs, either. My family spent 8 months of of the last year without a head-of-household income, and we made it. We're behind where we'd like to be at age 40 with a child 5 years away from college, but we are alive, we're together, and we're healthy. And we will be fine, no matter who sits in the White House.

Godot is not coming. We know this, and yet we anticipate with such furor every four years that we learn nothing. I don't want to wait anymore. I want us to learn - as a country, and as human beings - to make it better ourselves. I want to know, "What's Next?"

Stop looking for other people and things to blame for your life, and start living it.